Malta International Airport plc - April Traffic Results

Monday, May 5th, 2014

On 5 May, Malta International Airport plc published the April 2014 traffic results. The statistics reveal a 13.7% increase in passenger movements when compared to the same month last year to a record of 376,935 passengers. The increased passenger traffic was due to a 11.7% rise in seat capacity combined with a 1.3 percentage point increase in the seat load factor to 76.6%. The announcement also noted that the increase in passenger numbers during the month of April is also due to the shift of the Easter holiday period into mid-April from end of March in the previous year.

Nonetheless, the announcement explained that the total number of passenger movements during the month of April 2014 is similar to that registered in June 2012 (a summer month) of 375,294 passengers. This is reflective of the efforts undertaken by the Ministry for Tourism, Malta Tourism Authority and the Airport in promoting Malta as an all-year round destination. In this respect, MIA’s CEO Markus Klaushofer commented that “the increased traffic we’ve been seeing between winter and spring shows that Malta is no longer perceived as just a summer destination among holidaymakers. These results augur well for a busy summer.”

The airport operator also stated that double-digit growth was registered by the German (+21.6%), French (+21.4%), UK (+14.8%) and Italian (+12.3%) markets. On the other hand, the Spanish market registered a decrease of 27.1%.

During the first four months of the year, MIA registered a 10.3% increase in passenger movements to 1,033,023 (2013: 936,687).